Redemption
by Bustahead
Summary: Takes place in DMC1. Trish is dead and finds herself coming face to face with an all too familiar face...


**_At the risk of sounding extremely pompous, I've decided to be honest with everyone and tell them that I actually like the way this fic came out, that I like the whole concept of it. I've been meaning to write this for a while and only now I've had the guts._**

**_Laryna had asked me, after giving a review to Tragedy, in which I said that I would do a request fic for anybody who "liked it" I was being rather...um...well I used the wrong word, at any rate. In other words, I meant to say that I'm taking requests and that if anyone wants to see a fic, I'll do my utmost to try and write something concerning the characters the person in question wants to see._**

**_So, when Laryna asked me to write a Sparda and a Eva, I couldn't actually think of much. So I told her I'd write something that I didn't think I'd seen anywhere._**

**_So here it is._**

**_I thank everyone who may read this in advance._**

**_You guys mean the world to me._**

**Redemption**

_Dark. Everything was dark. Yet before, everything had been startlingly white, so bright that it hurt her eyes, so bright that it dazzled her and gave her a blinding headache._

_Pain. She could feel pain. Dead people couldn't still feel pain, could they? She didn't know, and she had never had any way of talking to the dead; there was no way of her finding out. The brightness seemed to fall away, the blinding light slowly diminishing, leaving her floating in the dark, the only thing giving out light was the golden glow emanating from her own body._

_Maybe the dead _could_ feel pain. Where _was_ she anyway? In heaven? No, there could not be such a place. Heaven would not exist for such a traitorous being like her, for someone who carried damned blood in her veins._

_Then was she in hell? No, she definitely wasn't. She'd been in hell, she'd been born in hell, and this place was pitch-black. If this were truly hell it would have been pitch-black because someone had gouged her eyes out. But this was certainly not the case; she could see her own body clearly._

_She screwed her eyes shut as she tried to, struggled to remember just what exactly had happened immediately before she had found herself in this strange and frightening place. Fright. Well, that was a new emotion she had never experienced before, yet she could still identify it oddly enough. Fright. She had been scared. She remembered hearing him call out to her, could remember the way it seemed to pull at something within her. Her heart? If that was the case, she had become a fool, an idiot._

_No wonder why she had failed her master. He did not need people with hearts and with minds of their own. He did not need fools like her when he was surrounded by a veritable army of demons, all eager to do their master's bidding. An army that the silver-haired demon slayer had somehow been able to plough through and vanquish without so much as batting an eye._

_And somehow, somewhere along the path of all his journeying, she had grown to admire him. And she remembered with a sudden and unexpected burst of clarity that it had been this and this alone that had been her undoing._

_She could remember turning to him when he had called her name, could remember her shock as she had turned around, and could clearly visualize her…her fear as she watched the stone pillar teeter precariously before falling slowly, slowly, but still too fast for her to really react._

_And he had saved her, and she had asked why._

_He had given a lame excuse, had told her that it was because she had his mother's face. And she had been stunned, not only at the fact that Dante was not telling the truth, but at the fact that everything about her, her body, her face, everything, had been created with one goal in mind; to trap Dante both emotionally and physically, to lead him to Mundus._

_And she had been scared, knowing what would happen to her once her purpose had been served. She had told herself that her master would want to keep his faithful servant, even after he had attained his dreams of conquering the mortal realm._

_Somehow, she had doubted it._

_And Mundus had sensed the questions in her head, had sensed the seeds of doubt that had been planted in her…in a thing that wasn't meant to exist in the first place._

_And when she was hung aloft on the wall, and used to insult the denizens of the heavens, she knew. Even before death, she had been toyed with mercilessly, the disrespect and dismissive attitude towards her displayed in the cruellest way she could possibly imagine. She had loved her master and the knowledge that she was being used, that she would not be able to die with honour…it had filled her with rage. That and her growing concern and admiration for the hunter. She had been unable to bear the sight of watching him die like a dog._

_And so she had broken free._

_And so she had died in his place. She had chosen to die like a dog in his stead._

_But she had died with honour, honour that Dante had unwittingly given her by his show of compassion._

_She was dead._

_This dark place without light, it was death. And the knowledge filled her with an odd sense of peace. But eventually, as she drifted there with her eyes closed, she could feel a presence, could see a white glow from underneath her closed lids, a light that made her spirit burn with curiosity. She smiled for no reason other than the fact that she felt as though she could without being penalized and opened her eyes._

_Only to be met by the sight of her own face._

_For a while she could only stare in open-mouthed wonder as she stared into her own orbs, as she stared at the beautiful tresses of long silky hair, at the graceful lips that were curved elegantly into a gentle smile. She blinked and moved her arm to brush a lock of hair away from her eyes and was immediately confused when her reflection refused to do the same. And it was only then that she realized that this woman wasn't a reflection at all, and that the clothes she was wearing were certainly nothing like her own; the woman in front of her was wearing a red shawl that covered her shoulders, a black dress underneath. In short, she was dressed simply yet elegantly. And then there were other things that she noticed were different. Like the way her eyes shone with a gentleness she had never felt._

_And seeing Dante's mother floating before her now, she could understand exactly what the hunter had meant._

'_I think you know who I am,' the woman said, a gentle smile tugging at the corners of her lips._

'_I'd be a fool not to,' Trish replied. She couldn't stop the bitterness in her voice. 'I have your face but not your fire.' Eva was silent at that but only for a few seconds before the smile returned to grace her lips._

_Trish forced herself to look away._

'_I don't want to be dead. But at the same time I have nothing left on that world. I was a toy.'_

'_You were willing to give your life for my son's. Why?'_

'_I…I don't really know.' Eva smiled at this, as if Trish had said something particularly clever or amusing._

_Trish watched her quietly in contemplation, her eyebrows slowly drawing together as she became more and more irritated. At length, she could not stand the silence._

'_What's so funny?' Eva blinked as though taken by surprise before smiling again._

'_My sons. Both of them. To think that when they were younger it was such a perfect little family…and that if things had remained the same, they would have had a little sister. Dante was never so mistrusting.' Her eyes filled unexpectedly with tears. 'You mustn't hold it against him, what he said.'_

'_He was lying. He didn't save me because I have your face. It's because his conscience wouldn't let him.'_

'_He's compassionate. If he wasn't, he would have let you die.'_

'_He hates me.'_

'_Does he?' Trish raised her eyebrows at Eva's question and stared at hr as if she had grown an extra head. 'I think you're wrong.' Trish frowned, obviously confused. _

'_What do you mean?'_

'_Look.' She waved her arm and a curtain of darkness swept away, revealing a star-studded sky. Trish watched as her former master fired orbs of devastating energy at a smaller black horned figure. Her eyes widened._

'_Is that…is that…Dante?' she gasped. Eva said nothing but merely nodded. Her eyes passed over Trish's face silently before they returned to the scene before them. Trish didn't notice the look of anxiety on Dante's mother's face as Mundus roared out with pain and smashed red lances through the brave slayer's body. Trish failed to notice Eva visibly flinching as her son was slammed from above and sent plummeting back down to earth._

_The darkness returned, obscuring Trish's view, causing her to cry out in protest. She gasped in surprise as she felt an ice-cold hand wrap around her wrist. She wheeled around, only to be met by her…Eva's eyes. They stared at her imploringly, filling her with an awful sense of alarm._

'_You're not dead, Trish. Not yet.'_

'_What?'_

'_This is all a dream, Trish. You need to make up your mind. You need to come to a decision. Do you want to live? Do you want to die? Decide. Wake up.'_

_Trish was silent in the face of this shocking revelation. For a few seconds, all she could do was stand there ad gape at her numbly._

'_It's as easy as that?'_

'_Your demonic body is waiting for you to choose.' There was a silence and Trish's thoughts whirled about in her head. Her mouth moved, uttering words she wasn't aware she was speaking._

'_I want to live.'_

'_The go. Live. Wake.' There was a pause between them. 'You have my face. Prove that you have a heart. Watch over my son. Protect him in the ways he can't protect himself.'_

'_I-'_

'_Please.'_

_And it had pulled at her…at her…did she really have a heart? She must do. It was aching for this beautiful woman, the elegant spirit that stood before her. She nodded._

'_I promise.'_

_The last thing she saw before darkness swamped her completely was Eva's smiling, tearful face._

_---_

_When she next woke, everything was white, and the first thing she saw was Eva's face staring at her through a red-tinged glow. She stared at her blankly before reaching out to touch her face, blinking when she felt the unfamiliar texture of cold metal._

_Her vision cleared and this time she realized that this time it really was only a reflection. She smiled weakly before hauling herself to her feet, trembling with exertion at first before rapidly gaining strength as her body started to heal._

_She looked up towards the ceiling of the throne room and smiled._

_His mother had guided her through death. And now the time had come for his father to guide her through life._

_Hefting the blade, she walked out of the throne room._

_And never looked back._

_She had a new master now, one that wouldn't ever fail her._

_Her heart._


End file.
